You don't have to like the movie(s), but that doesn't mean you have to but bullcrap in my mouth that I never claimed. And spending so much time ripping apart a movie you irrationally hate in lengthy, multiquote posts makes it appear like you should spend your time on something else. I don't know if you genuinely don't know what you're talking about or lying to yourself and others or what.

Did I ever say every single one of those things has to be in Transformers? NO! BUT those are things that CAN appear in Transformers.

Capture Optimus Prime. Hunt and kill the remaining Transformers on Earth with Cemetery Wind. Give the humans the Seed. All of these are kind of important in the movie.

1. Never is it said Quintessa was not a Transformer.
2. You forget the various aliens in the cages on Lockdown's ship, including the one Hound kills and the one whose tongue wraps around Tessa's leg. Not to mention those cyborg wolves and Lockdown's other henchman, which may or may not be Transformers.

The purpose of Transformium is that you can program it to form and function as whatever you want. THAT is its purpose. The humans wanted robots that they thought they could control, even though they didn't thanks to Galvatron. A human-controlled robot that could transform into a vehicle would be a pretty damn big deal.

And who was behind KSI and the human-made Transformers? MEGATRON. You know, the very leader of the Decepticons?

When have most of the Transformers ever been more than two-dimensional? I can't think of this series where most of the robots aren't archetypes, clichés, and stereotypes. None of the comics, cartoons, or games ring bell. Not one.

Again, the latter is not what I ever said. Try again.

And I never argued for endless sequels. Just that I prefer a traditional lineup of sequels. Those are two completely different things.

So you have no idea what you're talking about.

I enjoyed it and the other films for being over-the-top summer blockbusters that entertained me, and that even gave me some emotional moments from time-to-time. I enjoyed it as a sequel to DotM. So you and any fans parroting you need to stop acting as if you cant handle the idea of someone liking something you don't. No Transformers fan was personally hurt by the existence of any of the movies, so grow up and stop acting as if any of the movies were these brand-ruining events.

 

Got em XD

 

No, because I actually liked AOE. It’s my favorite, following TF1.

 

I could say the same about how you appear almost all the time to defend the damn film.

Given the tone of your post seemed to suggest that things should happen because they could be explored? Forgive me for thinking that quite obviously implied you thought that the story would never need to end because they could just endlessly introduce new concepts or characters.

He did the first thing...and failed miserably at keeping him captured or even out of the armory where he found the stupid upgrade sword or from freeing the other prisoners. He did the second thing...and failed miserably because those new Decepticons in TLK had to come from somewhere that was not outer space. And he did the third thing which...makes zero sense given you toot your horn over him stating that the Transformers are not the center of the universe, but if alien life exists on other planets besides Cybertron and Earth, if organic material only can be used to make bullshit metal and the Creators/Quints/Generic undescribed third party has the ability to make more of it, why the fuck go to all the trouble of messing around on Earth when they could just recreate it on some other planet where sapient organic life hasn't evolved yet? PLUS, why put the Seed on Earth if this third party, represented by Quintessa, already knew Earth was fucking Unicron? Why the ever loving fuck would anybody with a smidge of inteligence think potentially turning the body OF AN ENTITY OF CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION into POLYMORPHIC METAL INCARNATE and most likely wake him up was even remotely a good idea?!

Context is important and somehow you keep excusing AoE having literally none of it that was worth following as far as TLK was concerned. Why go to such lengths like killing off everybody just to bring more back who 'were around the whole time anyway'?

Lorenzo said otherwise.

This of course is complete bullshit since humans haven't been around for 6 billion years. BUT, since Lorenzo is the front man for the TF films, this statement by him is basically 'word of God'. And it makes zero sense. Unless you're going to call Lorenzo either a liar or he has no fucking clue what he's talking about, both of which would mean attacking the dude who made your favorite movie happen through that kind of stupidity.

You just said it yourself they may or may not. Just as much proof exists that they are as they aren't, and seeing as how TLK failed to explore any of that through significance makes these cannon fodder targets ultimately inconsequential.

No, that's utter bullshit! Why the hell would a human shaped robot turn into fucking sportscars that can't go over speed bumps somehow be a game-changing weapon? Especially when you fail to address how you still destroy it with bullets that have existed since WWII and available to every major country who would actually buy these stupid things. A fucking M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank is tougher than a Transformer - including ones that turn into M1A1s because the Transformium property means they only look like they have the same kind of armor but really don't - because the ceramic armor can't be hurt by conventional bullets or even smaller gauge tank shell ordinance. Even if the whole Galvatron-fucked-everything part about controling them didn't come into play, they're still a shitty idea because the moment anybody figures out an even better way to take them down - like, I dunno, mass produced cold guns (already a thing as per the first film since S7 had multiples of these) - then they lose any and all usefulness.

Case in point: the infamous German Panzer. Absolute monster on the battlefield that could take unreal amounts of punishment from conventional allied tanks...until the allies captured some abandoned, damaged ones in Africa and discovered the Achilles heel in their vulnerable turret assemblies. The Sherman Firefly soon came to be - mass produced Shermans mounted with 88mm cannons - as a dedicated Panzer killer and soon the feared German Tiger was not that big a threat because weaker armored tanks were able to curbstomp them.

Transformium drones are already at the point where their weakness is well known - extreme temperature exposure. FURTHERMORE, you fail to take into account how utterly awful it would be to have to repair the fucking things in the field. A drone suffers damage? You can't simply take a mass produced replacement part like literally every single successful military machine design in history and drop it in, oh no, you have to special order it out of Transformium and then some kind of almagation process or whatever because the drone is made up of cubes or whatever instead of hard machinery. And every single drone is a one-off custom so you can't even standardize a handful of models, you might even need a technican to go around with every single drone when it needs repairs or malfunctions. That kind of cost ceiling would be reserved for state of the art jets or land tanks, to the point it would be easier to just buy the actual fucking vehicle and not some dumbass space metal robot that is far more unreliable and expensive to maintain and use in comparison. And I'm not overthinking this, either - this entire thing is literally the purpose of the ED-209 from Robocop; it was supposed to be shit and break down a lot, the idea was essentially a scam to milk the military for money through the replacement parts program. KSI had no support network in place to even make selling the drones to anybody remotely feasible, let alone financially viable in the long term.

I'm sorry, I thought that was GALVATRON. You made such a big deal about him being one of the TF's who appeared post DOTM. All of a sudden now it's just Megatron again? It's almost like him being Galvatron was utterly fucking meaningless. Especially since he does go back to being Megatron in the next film anyway.

Beast Wars Dinobot doesn't immediately come to mind? For shame.

Again, your post came off as being 'they shouldn't end the franchise because there's so much more for them to explore' in the sense of they CAN do it, instead of if they SHOULD do it.

A 'traditional' lineup of sequels usually boiled down to only two sequels after the main entry. Granted, this trend has been bucked by several franchises outside of anything attempting to be a cinematic universe, but for all the money that Despicable Me has made, I sure don't see Illumination making a DM4 or a Minions 2.

I'm pretty sure I read a post by you, if not the one I quoted then one somewhere else, where you gushed about how much you liked everything AoE set up for a sequel which TLK promptly dropped the ball on. Maybe I'm mistaken there, but even so, the point is AoE is a fairly thoughtless effort in terms of anything actually approaching a narrative.

And you're perfectly within your rights to do so.

And yet when people in the movie lovers camp exhibit similar behavior by attacking people who openly voice their dislike of the films, you stand by silently. Double standards much?

Right. Remind me how badly TLK failed? All the talk in the world about how great the film franchise was is useless when the hard numbers don't lie. And it was largely the same team behind TLK that produced AoE, the only real difference being the presence of the writer's room, so it isn't like there was some kind of massive quality drop when it was the same people producing the same product and somehow got entirely different results if you didn't look at AoE's numbers blatantly pointing out it was an anomaly through market manipulation and not really something a franchise's longitivity with no changes to the formula should have ever been staked on.

 

Oh boi, what a fun read  

 

Blame it on Lorenzo  
read my first comment on this thread lol

 

*sigh*

 

Yup.

 

AoE should have been 2 separate movies: AoE parts 1 & 2.

 

Wow. You like writing.

I don't know what you were going on about since I got bored and quit reading but I just want to add my thoughts to the subject matter of this thread.


I'm glad the movies have continued since the are many people who like them. I don't watch the newer ones as much as the first three live action films but their continued existence hasn't bothered my enjoyment of the ones I like.

 

I don't get your point here. Yeah, the Autobots sneak aboard and free Optimus Prime, just like so many other characters in other movies that are captured or imprisoned get released. The Joker in TDK, Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, that one guy in Indio's band in For a Few Dollars More, Mason and Goodspeed in The Rock, Loki in Avengers, James Bond in some movies, etc., etc., etc. That doesn't change the fact he was captured by Lockdown, and he only escaped because of his own Autobots rescuing him.

Excuse me? Did you not watch the film? It was specifically said that Transformers were coming to Earth in many waves since AoE in TLK, so your point is baseless.

Lockdown wasn't referring specifically to Transformers. He was referring to ALL species he encountered, including humans.

Because they literally bombed thousands of worlds. Earth was just one of many worlds, and what we see at the beginning of the film is one visual example to show what happened on those many worlds.

No, it is definitely not bullshit. The point of Transformium is that the Transformers are made of a programmable metal and not how tough or resistant of a material it is.

In fact, I think it's a nice explanation actually. A metal whose molecules are not stable relative to each other explains how Transformers can rearrange their molecules adapt their engineering, texture, and colors to new alternate modes. Transformers do not conveniently have leather, glass, rubber, etc. Let alone skin, hair, and mucous membranes like those of a human, so Transformium also explains how Alice is able to turn into a very realistic human being. And not only resemble Earth's machinery and life forms, but also do it seamlessly.

The whole point of Galvatron was that he merely feigned being a mindless drone. He was "reborn."

I think that was more you reading into it than me.

Not always. By "traditional lineup" I merely meant the second film follows the events of the first film and so on.

Liking what AoE set up =/= the main reason someone liked it automatically.

And if a sequel doesn't follow up, that's on it.

By Transformers standards I think it's quite solid, and much better than given credit. It wasn't any worse than the movies that came before it, that's for certain. The subplots were narratively connected: Lockdown and the humans merely gave the remains of the Transformers to KSI, who melted them down into Transformium for their own Transformers, only for Galvatron to use the whole situation to his advantage. The Autobots and human protagonists, who on the surface weren't all rosy, but who also all had redeeming qualities as individuals, fit the whole 'You gotta look at all the junk and see the treasure" moral, and the film shows how efforts at absolute control fail absolutely. Lockdown (fails to completely eliminate the the factions), the Creators (their creations are no longer controlled by them, and Lockdown almost succeeds for them in capturing Prime and bringing him back, but not quite), Galvatron (gains control of the prototypes, but fails to account for the Dinobots being freed), KSI (fails to control their robots), Cemetery Wind (fails to kill all Earthbound Transformers), and Cade (fails to control his daughter's life) all attempt to control some things absolutely...and all fail as a result. The only group of characters that don't attempt absolute control are the Autobots, and they are the heroes of the film. And Cade only succeeds when he realizes he can't control his daughter's life.

And that's another reason why it's my favorite film. Because even though humans are obviously involved, it's not the US military coming in at the end of the day to save the world, but the Autobots and Dinobots.

The difference in overall quality between the different Bayverse films is not as great is believed, which is why it's silly when fans act as if the first three over-the-top Bay films were these perfectly kosher, acceptable additions to Transformers, while the latter two over-the-top films these unacceptable abominations that ruined the movies. Especially when fans complained non-stop about the first trilogy in the past, and many changes made post-DotM were made to please people who whined non-stop about the earlier movies. So yeah, it's fine for fans prefer some films over others. I like DotM and AoE and RotF more than TLK. And you can like all, none, or some of them. But I'm not going to pretend that the silly things in my favorite Bayverse films are so much better than the silly things in my least favorite, or that my preferred films are somehow on a totally different level of film-making.

So yeah, whatever one thinks of the Bay films, I think plenty of thought was put into them. Maybe even too much thought I'll say.

 

Oh, you're gonna fucking hate Bumblebee, then. Absolutely hate it. Because all of this?

The trailers already proved none of this applies.  

No point in arguing further seeing as how you're set in your ways, then, as I am in mine. But all I have to do is look at how TLK proved me right that the film series went down the shitter because they had no fucking clue what they were doing. And TLK never would have happened if AoE hadn't set it up to fall that hard either.

 

Uh...He's seen it. He went to the pre-screening. He's reviewed it. He liked it.

By the way, endorsing Anthony Hopkins (Yes, I know it's Westworld) as your avatar kind of leaves me with the impression that you actually "love" TLK.

 

Given that was a non-final cut and there are reportedly some major, if small, changes between the pre-screen and the final cuts, that jury is still out if you ask me.

Don't you fucking DARE compare Westworld to TLK.

But in a way, I suppose you're right - TLK having absolutely blown the franchise out of the water by underscoring how fucking idiotic it all was? That I can get behind because the numbers are always on my side now.

 

The December 8th screening was final.

Calm down... We can talk this out like professionals.

'Always' on your side?



What was your prediction for the Bumblebee RT debut score then? I would like to know... Was it a high 90% or was it somewhere around 60-80%?

Box office can come later.

 

I wouldn't call that a 'pre-screening'.

Well, yeah, TLK completely shut down the bayverse. It's not coming back after that abysmal performance. Nothing is going to change that Bayformers failed in the end.

To be perfectly honest? Mid-70's to high 80s. That it did nearly a perfect 100 was a surprise, but that further just goes to show how the original five films could have been so much better instead of what we got - and I say this as somebody who likes the first three films (a fact almost everybody seems to forget because AoE basically took everything I liked about the films and shit all over it). Bumblebee isn't loaded down with all the bullshit about mucking about in human history, Prime isn't some murderous mary sue who probably could have won the war by himself with his kill count, and the designs are far, far more appealing. They just need to make Bumblebee talk again and it'll be almost a completely clean break.

Doubtful, since everybody seems to be hoping for a Jumanji: WTOJ situation but Bumblebee desperately needs to do well if there are going to be any more Transformers films. And given that it's going to be occupying theatres next to Aquaman and Spiderverse, it's going to be a hard fought battle the whole way.

 

Maybe you're confusing the word 'test screening'.

It's dead for sure but its legacy isn't.

Some of these things you mentioned are part of the first 3 films.

I'd rather be hopeful than doubtful. Hope for the vest that is.

And if you're talking about US and Canada exclusively, then yes... It will be a tough battle.

 

The only thing I recall ever hearing about the early screenings last week was that they were preview events. It would be utterly pointless to do 'test' screenings this close to the release date, since what the hell could they change? We know they changed a lot after the ones in March and that took six months if not more to implement those changes.

All I care about is that there won't be more of it. It needed it die so that the brand could at least try to reinvent itself again in hopes of digging itself out of the rut that the films put it in thanks to TLK. And while Bumblebee isn't as much of a total reinvention as I would like, it's a decent first step.

True, but I am not denying that the first three films are not without major flaws. However, at the very least they kept the Decepticons an actual threat. AoE didn't have any Decepticons beyond Galvatron, and in TLK they were a fucking joke through and through. Trying to substitute human villains for Decepticons is not what I want in my Transformers media where they exclusively target only Autobots and utterly ignore the Decepticons, OR are incomprehensibly powerful enough to make Megatron not simply murder the fuck out of them the moment they don't give him what he wants. The one exception being Dr. Morocco since Rescue Bots didn't have Decepticons, but Morrocco was fucking awesome and technically is actually the most successful human villain in the franchise given he outright wins in the dark timeline at the end of S1. And he didn't even need some bullshit about hating the Transformers as justification, either.

Forgive me for being a realist then.

Well, yes, because the domestic take is really the most important one. AoE made a billion, sure, but most of it was overseas where Paramount makes less on each dollar spent on movie tickets. That's not the case in the domestic market, where Paramount gets the most money per dollar spent on tickets.

Trying to rely on the foreign box office numbers to make up for not shoring up the domestic box office is the exact reason TLK failed. This issue was clearly visible if you examined the numbers from AoE that if it hadn't been for appealing to China, that film wouldn't have made a billion because of how poor the domestic take was (to the point I remember the big debate over whether or not AoE had even made $100 million opening weekend or if Paramount slightly fudged the numbers to try and make AoE not look like it was already underperforming).

This may not entirely have been the case before with the previous films, but Bumblebee will decide the fate of any future Transformers films. And if it doesn't do well domestically, then that's a problem for Hasbro because bad film reception = bad toyline movement, and it cuts into their bottom line.

 

The December 8th release was neither a pre-screening nor a test-screening. It was an advanced release.

 

I'm gonna give my opinion.
I've watched 1-5 multiple times and I can say with absolute certainty that I dislike the first 3 movies more than the last two. They just... aren't put together well. The more I watch the first ones, 2 and 3 especially, the less I like them.

Getting into a long winded rant about them isn't what this thread is for, but just know that I can go into excruciating detail about the issues with the first 3.

So if the movies had ended after 3 I would have really hated the movie continuity.